Posted on 05/29/2005 11:13:11 AM PDT by Crackingham
Maggie Williams and her daughter Sam Huff had much in common. As a teenager 35 years ago, Ms. Williams joined the US Marine Corps and became an air traffic controller, directing jet fighters and helicopters in Vietnam as the war there was winding down. Back in the United States, she began a career in law enforcement, married a police officer, and raised a family.
When she was just 16, Ms. Huff told her parents she wanted to join the US Army right out of high school, and later start a career with the FBI. She toughed out boot camp last year and then joined a military police unit driving Humvees through the mean streets of Iraq. But there the mother-daughter similarity ends. On April 18, Pfc. Huff's Humvee hit a roadside bomb in Baghdad, and she was killed. Posthumously awarded a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart, she was buried at Arlington National Cemetery recently. She was 18.
As Memorial Day approaches, one might say that Maggie Williams and Sam Huff are bookends for the history of women in the US military in the modern era. As a marine, Williams did a job that was very traditionally male. Huff - the 37th (and latest) American woman to be killed in Iraq - epitomizes the current debate over whether women, even if they volunteer, should be fighting alongside men. Congress has been debating the issue this week. Some lawmakers want to assert more congressional control over Pentagon policies that have opened up more and more jobs to women in recent years, including those that increasingly put them in the thick of the shooting. Of the 37 women lost, 25 were from hostile causes such as rocket or grenade attacks, ambushes, and roadside bombs.
In a way, the job expansion is a pattern that has occurred since the Vietnam War: Women demonstrate excellence in such positions as fighter pilot, military police officer, and heavy equipment operator, and then are more likely to have perilous assignments - particularly during a recruiting shortage. Some welcome the opportunity; but some do not, according to surveys of women in uniform. Here, too, the changing nature of war seems to accelerate the pattern.
"Modern wars will be fought 360 degrees, which means women will be on the 'front lines' whether the Congress likes it or not," says retired Army Col. Dan Smith, a military analyst with the Friends Committee on National Legislation in Washington.
Though many servicemen in Afghanistan and Iraq have children, it is the mothers in the war zones who seem to raise greater concerns. (Army Pfc. Lori Ann Piestewa, the first American woman to be killed in Iraq, left two small children to be raised by their grandparents.) Until recent years, if a woman in uniform got pregnant or adopted a child, she had to leave the service. Loren Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va., says his parentsare a good example of what happened in the past. His father was an Army colonel who served with Gen. "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell in China. His mother was an Army major on Gen. Douglas MacArthur's staff during the occupation of Japan. They met in Korea and married.
"Some time later I was conceived and Mom got the boot, even though she appealed her involuntary retirement all the way to the Senate Armed Services Committee," recalls Dr. Thompson.
While the general trend toward more rights for women in the United States has advanced steadily in recent decades, those gains aren't necessarily exportable - particularly in wartime. Waging a counterinsurgency war in one of the world's most traditional societies is a reminder that American values cannot be the only factor shaping military policy, says Thompson.
"The first lesson of effective counterinsurgency is respect for local peoples and their cultures, so this could become a test of American flexibility," he adds.
"This is one case where it may not be feasible to honor American values and those of the people we propose to liberate at the same time," he says. "Our attitudes toward gender equality and relations between the sexes may simply be too different."
Illustrating this point is an Army Reserve unit based in Richmond, Va., which will soon go to Iraq to train Iraqi soldiers. They will leave behind some 20 female drill instructors because of such sensitivities.
"I understand each culture has different morals and customs, and I have to respect that," Staff Sgt. Stefania Traylor told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. "But on the other hand, it's quite different from our culture, so I do have a problem with that. If you are getting experience, knowledge, and guidance from an individual, it shouldn't matter whether you are male or female."
Those who argue otherwise note the physiological differences between men and women - for example, the upper-body strength necessary to operate some heavy weapons effectively or to pull a fallen comrade out of harm's way.
"To pretend that women would have an equal capability of doing that is a dangerous philosophy, and lives could be lost as a result of it," says Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness and one of the most outspoken critics of current military policy on women in war zones.
Absolutely, we are still suffering the consquences
Audie Murphy Biography
He wanted to join the Marines, but he was too short. The paratroopers wouldn't have him either. Reluctantly, he settled on the infantry, enlisting to become nothing less than one of the most-decorated heroes of World War II. He was Audie Murphy, the baby-faced Texas farmboy who became an American Legend.Murphy grew up on a sharecropper's farm in Hunt County, Texas. Left at a very young age to help raise 10 brothers and sisters when his father deserted their mother, Audie was only 16 when his mother died. He watched as his brothers and sisters were doled out to an orphanage or to relatives.
Seeking an escape from that life in 1942, he looked to the Marines.War had just been declared and, like so many other young men, Murphy lied about his age in his attempt to enlist. but it was not his age that kept him out of the Marines; it was his size. Not tall enough to meet the minimum requirements, he tried to enlist in the paratroopers, but again was denied entrance. Despondent, he chose the infantry.
Following basic training Murphy was assigned to the 15th Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division in North Africa preparing to invade Sicily. It was there in 1943 that he first saw combat, proving himself to be a proficient marksman and highly skilled soldier, consistently his performance demonstrated how well he understood the techniques of small-unit action. He landed at Salerno to fight in the Voltuno river campaign and then at Anzio to be part of the Allied force that fought its way to Rome. Throughout these campaigns, Murphy's skills earned him advancements in rank, because many of his superior officers were being transferred, wounded or killed. After the capture of Rome, Murphy earned his first decoration for gallantry.
Shortly thereafter his unit was withdrawn from Italy to train for Operation Anvil-Dragoon, the invasion of southern France. During seven weeks of fighting in that successful campaign, Murphy's division suffered 4,500 casualties, and he became one of the most decorated men in his company. But his biggest test was yet to come.
On Jan. 26, 1945, near the village of Holtzwihr in eastern France, Lt. Murphy's forward positions came under fierce attack by the Germans. Against the onslaught of six Panzer tanks and 250 infantrymen, Murphy ordered his men to fall back to better their defenses. Alone, he mounted an abandoned burning tank destroyer and, with a single machine gun, contested the enemy's advance. Wounded in the leg during the heavy fire, Murphy remained there for nearly an hour, repelling the attack of German soldiers on three side and single-handedly killing 50 of them. His courageous performance stalled the German advance and allowed him to lead his men in the counterattack which ultimately drove the enemy from Holtzwihr. For this Murphy was awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest award for gallantry in action.
By the war's end, Murphy had become the nation's most-decorated soldier, earning an unparalleled 28 medals, including three from France and one from Belgium. Murphy had been wounded three times during the war, yet, in May 1945, when victory was declared in Europe, he had still not reached his 21st birthday.
My point is not that I don't want women in the clubhouse, my point is the clubhouse should be open to all with no double standards.
MikeinIraq: "What the author is questioning is whether women should even be in Iraq and maybe even the military altogether."
skylark68: "I think you're right. The author seems to have an agenda that he doesn't really want to reveal."
Nothing riles me up faster than a hack writer playing coy with a hidden agenda.
I don't think I would be as bitter as I am if I had any indication that men and even boys were coming around to the idea that 'girls' can't be kept out of the hurly-burly of daily life and relegated to secretarial work and staying home raising children or teaching or nursing. (Battlefield nursing is going to take them to the front lines, by the way, and they won't be armed either; any of you anti-woman boys want to comment on that?) Just get over the idea that men get a vote at all on whether or not the 'ladies' are capable of functioning as full fledged human beings; that question has been settled in the West, and it's time we all moved on.
I'm not in favour of women getting into all the mens' clubs, but I am definitely in favour of one standard for everyone and an end to the continuing whine that 'girls' don't belong here, there or anywhere due only to the fact that they are 'girls'. After 40 years and two generations I would have thought this stupid argument would have ended by now.
Good point.
don't get me wrong, I do not support women in combat. I define combat as combat patrols, sweep and clear and manuvers of that sort.
that is the current Army policy I believe.
KateatRFM,
You wrote: "...relegated to secretarial work and staying home raising children or teaching or nursing..."
You have two of what SHOULD be regarded as the most critically important of professions in there, raising children and teaching, one of the most difficult, nursing, and one of the most indispensible and underrated, secretarial work.
In my opinion, the feminist movement has done a great, great disservice to women by belittling and marginalizing these occupations. Additionally, in the civilian world, if a woman is motivated, there is nothing she cannot do.
Yes. . .exactly.
>>Too bad. We're not going back into the kitchen and we've all got shoes these days, that we bought for ourselves.<<
I am woman hear me MEOW.
;-)
Want to talk about discrimination. . .be a young White male and see what that gets you.
Understood.
The only fight left is NOT to allow women to be drafted.
At least she wanted to go .... most of the women that got pregnant did it want not to deploy. Either way you are right, it is wrong on so many levels.
Phyllis Schlafly has as article in today's Townhall.com suggesting that men might sign up in larger numbers if women were kept OUT of the combat zone.
I don't know if I really believe that or not....
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